Vivat Regina

I have a confession to make. From the ages of 8 until 12, a time when many of you were gazing lovingly at your Beatles, David Cassidy, Duran Duran, or Backstreet Boys album covers, I was harbouring a deep, dark secret. No, it wasn’t a misguided crush on Boy George. In fact, I cared very little for the boy bands of my time. I was too busy cutting out pictures for my scrapbook and pouring over books featuring my REAL interest: The British Royal Family.

Yes, it’s true. I was a staunch 10 year old mini- monarchist. I would have worn kid gloves and a tiara to school if my mother had let me.  By the time I went to middle school I could rattle off the birth dates and full names of most of the principal members of the royal family, the schools they went to and the names of their polo ponies. I knew what they liked to do in their free time (polo and skiing) and the intricacies of their social circles (polo team players and managers). The wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana on 29^th July 1981 in St Paul’s Cathedral (see what I mean?) intensified my interest, but I was hooked long before that. I blame it primarily on my grandmother, a devoted anglophile and devout monarchist.  When I stayed with her and my grandfather in their tiny D.I.Y Tudor-style cottage, my bed time stories were from books with catchy titles like, “The Six Wives of Henry VIII in Excruciating Detail” and “Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage for Insomniacs”.  For me, this was compelling stuff. Certainly not average reading material for a pre-teen girl, but there you have it. I was an odd child.

As a consequence of this early indoctrination, I dreamed of having a life surrounded by the people in these books. They were my fairy stories, only they involved people and places that really and truly existed. By the time I was 11 my imagination had me married off to Prince Edward, the youngest son of the queen. Never mind that I hadn’t yet even been to England and I was the daughter of a grocer, living in a town the size of a postage stamp in rural Canada. My parents cared passionately about good manners and social graces and endeavored to prepare me for whatever situation might come my way. I have always thought myself lucky that they did.

When I was 27 I moved to the UK, and briefly married a British diplomat. During those few years, I became a part of the world I had only dreamt about. Garden parties in Kensington, balls and receptions at Whitehall Palace, dinner conversations with people called “Sir” and “Lady”. Frankly, I faked my way through most of it by pretending to be Princess Diana. Most of the time, I felt accepted. And it was wondrous. I had unexpectedly become a part of the world I had always dreamed of and had, until that time, only really existed in my childhood scrapbook.

It all came crashing down when my husband and I divorced. That world had always seemed too good to be true, and now it was gone. But the little girl inside me wasn't able to let it go.  Not entirely. For the next few years, I continued to visit the UK . I felt the need to return to what I knew and the places that brought me such childlike comfort. The people and places in my scrapbook were so much more real to me now, and I could still see and touch them, even though I was once again on the outside looking in.

On one of those flights to London last fall, I was seated next to an English gentleman and we struck up a lively conversation. I was on my way to the UK to spend time with Scottish partner, he was on his way home to Wiltshire after a conference in Toronto. He was older than me, a great conversationalist with amusing stories to tell. He told me about his wife and sons, his career in the military, the time he spent in India. We each had a couple of those lovely mini-bottles of wine, our rectangular beef or chicken frozen dinners, and a good old chat as we crossed the Atlantic. By the time we reached Heathrow and started the race to immigration, we were fast friends. As we parted ways, he handed me his card and I tried not to smile as I saw the insignia.

“Any time you and your partner are in London and you want to come see me at the House of Lords, just drop me an e-mail. I would be glad to give you a personal tour,” he said as we waved good bye.

I stood and stared at the name on the card, just for a moment. And then, right there in the middle of passport control at Heathrow, I did a little dance, before calmly placing his card in my wallet and continuing on my way. I still had another flight to catch. And possibly a scrapbook to update.

(Stay tuned folks, for the story of me attempting to keep my cool on a private tour of the House of Lords.)

Ya Gotta Kiss A Lot of Frogs

Making friends is never easy, we all know that. I am sorry to say it gets harder as you get older. As time goes on your standards change and it’s no longer simply about whether the girl next to you also likes pink, or can consistently colour inside the lines or wants to join the Michael Jackson fan club that you are currently running out of your parents’ garage. You become picky and start looking for complex, intangible things like integrity, values and the ever elusive ‘good sense of humour’.  Although most of us will naturally gravitate towards those with talents, likes or dislikes similar to our own, the criteria for friendship naturally broadens a bit as time goes on. But just between you and me, I will confess to a continuing fondness for those who know all the lyrics to “Thriller” by heart. Bonus points if you include the Vincent Price bit.

Moving to Stavanger and facing the prospect of making new friends at age 40 was, and sometimes still is, a daunting prospect. While it is true that I don’t generally have problems meeting people and inflicting my friendship upon them, in the back of mind I always have a fear that THIS time will be different. This time I won’t meet anyone I like, or worse, no one will like me. I become 16 all over again, full of all the angst and anxiety but with a few less pimples and way more wrinkles. It doesn’t seem to matter that I have been doing this expat thing for the better part of 12 years, and that this is at least the seventh time in my adult life that I have had to start all over again in the friendship department. In my head I am still somewhat convinced that there are a finite amount of friendships to go around and that I have to get in there quickly and impress someone or I am never going to get invited to the prom. Instead, I will be left standing by the gym wall swaying back and forth to some Celine Dion song while everyone else gazes lovingly into their partner’s eyes.

It all sounds so frantic and slightly desperate, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. It’s like blind dating for months on end. Frantic, slightly desperate AND exhausting.

In all the cities I have lived in, there has always been an expat circuit, and Stavanger is no exception. If you are the temporarily jobless, accompanying partner, you have to do the rounds. The events organized for us are often similar to going on a cruise or package holiday except that sadly there is no free nightly Viking musical show and the drinks are reaaaalllly expensive. The purpose of this circuit is to create a sense of community among the community-less, and for the most part they achieve that aim.  Pub quizzes, coffee mornings, mum’s groups, they are all about trying to get us to meet as many people as possible rather than throw our hands up in the air and admit social defeat.

If you are lucky, you meet your friendship soul mate in the first few weeks of this circuit, after which you can just sit back and watch all the other poor souls drift aimlessly about, clutching their expensive drink while the love theme from Titanic plays wistfully in the background. If you are unfortunate, or have special friendship needs, you could be hanging about for months waiting for that certain someone to come along.

But we must not lose heart. The flip side of this whole situation is that we are in a town full of comings and goings. Yes, it can be heart-wrenching when your new found BFF suddenly decides that they are moving to Azerbaijan or Alaska, but if someone is leaving, someone else is just arriving. And you can bet your bottom Kroner that they will be looking for friends, too. It’s like having an eternal, self-replenishing dating pool at your fingertips. Even New York can’t claim that.

Despite our individual needs and relatively small numbers, there is a diverse and social expat community here. Stavanger may not have the non-stop excitement of a Bangkok or London, but there are always new people to meet if you are willing to make the effort. As for my new-found friendships, well, I suppose I can modify my criteria on the Michael Jackson thing a little. As long as you don’t listen to Celine Dion. That, my friend, is out of the question.

So, can I buy you a drink?

Trust Issues

     Trust is a funny thing, isn’t it? As children, we all start out with heaps of it, possibly so that we don’t think our mother is trying to poison us with strained pears, or that our father really IS going to leave us on the side of the road because he has had it up to here with the backseat bickering. If we are lucky enough to have had a stable family life, we generally grew up believing that it’s others that harm us. As we get older, the proof presents itself in the form of friends who mock us behind our back, colleagues who are nasty to our face, and lovers who make betrayal an art form. On top of this you add the odd experience of theft or other criminal activity, and bingo, we become fairly convinced that anyone outside our nearest and dearest is waiting for their chance to pounce.

     With that being said, Canadians have the reputation of being relatively trusting. We haven’t had a fight with the guys next door to us in two hundred years and up until 10 years ago, they didn’t even need a passport to get into our country. On the other side of the spectrum, my partner is Scottish, and they don’t trust anyone. This surely comes from years of clan infighting and outfighting and and beating up (and being beaten up by) the guys next door to THEM. Suffice it to say they are probably a bit suspicious of their own grandmother at this point. After all, who knows what she’s been up to.

     The Norwegians, though, seem to have a ton of this trust thing. This characteristic was evident from day one, when on arriving from the UK with 4 massive bags and a mountain of paperwork, I steeled myself for passport control and an interrogation of Soviet Cold War proportions. Of course, this never happened. I even put off getting a Stavanger library card for months because I didn’t have any documents to prove my name and Norwegian address. How would I ever be believed? In Canada they would probably want to finger print you and have you sign some sort of document giving up all rights to ever read again if you didn’t provide this proof within 7-10 working days. When I mentioned this to a Norwegian colleague she just shrugged. “You just need to tell them your name and e-mail,” she said. In my world, it’s been a long time since simply telling someone something was enough. Even to get a library card.

      But the ultimate example of Norwegian trust came just a few weeks later. One cool December Sunday afternoon, Scottish partner and I decided to go for a walk and as we neared one of the few restaurants open on the Sabbath, I heard a baby crying. Scouring the horizon for the owner of this precious cargo, I realized there were no parental units to be found. My next thought was to scan for a sound system, maybe I had chanced upon Norway’s version of a hidden camera show, probably called “Fool the Foreigner”? Still nothing.

      Staring into the floor to ceiling windows of the restaurant I saw a table of family members enjoying a meal, chatting and laughing in the warmth of a Sunday at leisure. Glancing to my right, outside of the restaurant, I discovered the source of the cries. Stationed up against the outside windows I saw a pram. With one slightly unhappy baby inside.

     At first I thought this must have been an oversight. What kind of mid-afternoon drinking binge had this mother been on to forget to bring her child in from the cold? Norwegians had always seemed so sensible to me, maybe I should report this to the proper authorities? Surely they would help get her off the schnapps and back to being a model of maternal propriety. Tsk tsk.

     Luckily, I did nothing of the sort. As it turns out, this would not be the last time I would see a child in a pram outdoors while the parents sat inside. Apparently, Norwegians believe that the cold, fresh air is beneficial to children, so they aim to get as much of that into them as possible. Naturally (and who can blame them when it’s February) they are not about to stand out there with them. Now I am not a mother, but I am pretty sure leaving your child on the street while you are inside having coffee is displaying just about as much trust as I can imagine. I can’t even leave my bike outside without a monstrous lock and a trained attack dog there to guard it.

     Will I ever reach the Norwegian level of trust and openness? I am not sure. I may be too far gone. In a country where anyone can access your personal information-salary, job title, maybe even what you ate for dinner last night-I struggle with putting my full name on my mailbox. I am what my experiences have made me, so I will start with baby steps.Heck, If Norwegian mothers can trust us with their children, then maybe I can return that trust, in my own way.

So here it goes. Today I will put my full name on the mailbox. I promise. Trust me.

Becoming Beth

We all know them, the “IT” girls. Usually, in North America anyway, they are named Ashley or Shawna, or maybe Shannon, depending on how old you are and who happened to be in your class the year you started noticing them, and henceforth started feeling like crap about yourself. You might even BE Ashley, Shawna or Shannon, and if that’s the case, you’ll probably want to stop reading right now cause you won’t get a word of what I am about to say. You most likely have a golf game, hair appointment or meeting with the partners to get to, anyway.

 In my case her name was Beth Johnson, and despite our shared moniker, I can assure you we had very little else in common. I first “met” her at tennis camp, which should tell you about all you need to know. She was cute and blonde and ponytailed and sporty and consistently clad in the newest Ralph Lauren attire. In short, all the things the 12 year old me desperately wanted to be, and maybe my parents hoped I would become by sending me to said tennis camp. But since my mother insisted that dying my hair at that age would make me look like a “mini-hooker” I was stuck with polyester polo shirts from a place called Bargain Harald’s, mousy, permed brown hair and the tennis skills of a visually impaired sloth. No chance the likes of Beth Johnson were talking to me.

Since that day, I have been consistently aware of these women around me. I have tried to emulate them in Rome (disastrous sweater tying incident), London, (unfortunate high heel/cobblestone street episode) and the French Riviera (ridiculous nude beach fiasco, don’t ask). So far I have failed miserably at becoming these bastions of feminine style, grace and sophistication. For many years, about the best I could hope for was not to have them point at my Asda/Walmart jeans, scream and have me forcibly removed from their sight by their football playing boyfriend, Chad. Eventually I accepted the sad fact that I was never going to be one of those women who could master the perfect ponytail. Comfort would never be on my side, I was going to have to make an effort. And it was probably going to hurt.

So it has been since my mid-twenties; pulling it together, but never quite achieving that effortless clean beauty that Beth Johnson seemed to take for granted, and that these European women continued to taunt me with. Lucky for me then that I moved to Norway, where I have been met by an entire nation of Beth Johnsons. Better break out the hair dye and the preppy handbook, I thought when I moved here, here we go again.

In keeping with this eternal quest for self-improvement, I began checking out the Norwegian women. No, not in THAT way. In a kinda sad, 40 –something trying to fit in kinda way. I am now pleased to share with you the results of my findings.

1)      Many Norwegian women have a natural elegance. Maybe this comes from generally being a pretty tall race. Maybe I just have to say that or they will kick my a**. Being 5’8 ish myself, it is rare I feel “dainty”, except once in Fiji. That was a good week. Anyway, tall girls, this is your place.

2)      They are seriously sporty. I am often at the gym or outside for run, but these women are ALWAYS outside doing something athletic. Most of the time I notice them bounding past me in running tights that make them look like really powerful gazelles. Me? I am probably closer to one of the running bulls of Pamplona, if they wore light reflective jogging jackets and Ipods.

3)      They somehow make winter dressing look stylish. OK, so Trinny and Susannah from What Not to Wear might disagree with me here, but I have yet to see a ridiculously dressed Norwegian woman in Stavanger. Well, there was that one girl making her way across an icy parking lot last week in a humongous parka and those Lady Gaga heels that make you look like a satyr. But surely she was the exception.

4)      They have the complexions of a Disney Princess. I almost always have a zit, which is categorically un-called for at my age. I may be able to fake the blonde hair but even with the kilos of salmon I regularly jam into my gob, I have never been able to achieve that skin. Except once, when I was three. That was also a good week.

It could be the fact that I turned the big 4-0 last month, or possibly it’s the fact that SOME of the characteristics of Norwegian women are achievable for me.  I mean, let’s face it, trying to make myself over into a 5’2, 100 pound Gitanes smoking Coco Chanel clone was always going to lead to disappointment. The scarf tying alone was killing me. But here, I can work with what I have . I am tallish, blonde and have finally found a sport which doesn’t make me feel like a visually impaired sloth, so I guess I am sporty too. For once, I think I might just have a chance at fitting in with these women.

Take that, Beth Johnson.

Home from Hjem

Hjem="Home" in Norwegian, pronounced "yem".

From the time I was a little girl, I can remember the thrill of getting on a plane. I loved the weeks or months of build-up to the event of going away. I would write feverishly about it in my diary, counting down the days, hours and minutes until I could leave the dreary burdens of my fourth grade Canadian life for more exciting climes, and presumably a more exotic type of cheeseburger. Equally, I can remember the return trips home and the dread that would insidiously work its way through my entire body as we neared the unavoidable conclusion of the holiday. “It’s good to go away, but it’s always nice come home, too,” my mother would say as we walked through the front door. No, I would think. It’s not. Who in their right mind would choose here over there?

 Hence my lifelong struggle with “home” began.

To the chagrin of many around me, I have been choosing there over here for most of my adult life. Even when I moved to Stavanger in November, I had mixed feelings about going back to Canada for Christmas. Seeing your friends and family is undoubtedly a wonderful thing, but going back to your hometown is like getting back together with the ex you still have feelings for, for one night. It makes you feel really great for a brief moment, but at some point you have to learn how to make it alone.

 And so it came to pass that getting on the plane from Toronto back to Stavanger was a ridiculously emotional affair for me. I thought I had the whole “stiff upper lip” thing covered until we got in the taxi to go to the airport, at which time the sight of the CN Tower caused me to blubber like a baby. I tried in vain to cover it up by feigning insane interest in the contents of my carry-on, but as I stared into the oblivion which is the bottom of my handbag, it hit me. I was now struggling to leave the place I had always taken great pleasure in running from. Clearly Toronto no longer bore the curse of being called ‘home’, which could mean only one thing: this dubious honour now belonged to Stavanger. Sorry, Norway.

By the time I arrived back on Scandinavian shores, I had a huge chip on my shoulder and my mum’s “no place like home” assertion running through my head. What had seemed a fun six week Norwegian holiday cum cultural exchange before Christmas had, in the intervening two weeks, become much more serious. This was commitment, not the silly fairy tale place that Judy Garland can’t stop going on about in her dumb rainbow song.  Stavanger was now home and home had always been the enemy.  You have something to prove S-town, I thought. You’d better bring it.

The flight into Sola was not encouraging. Battered by two weeks of too much festive cheer, and bruised from the withdrawal from my beloved sugar and wine, things were already not going in its favour. A heavy pea soup fog covered the coast, and it was raining. Super. My last port of call, Aberdeen, had been sunny and bright, a balmy thirteen degrees. I had left a full fridge there stocked with enough goodies to put the most hard core junk-food addict into hypoglycemic shock. The holiday was well and truly over, and I was pretty convinced that that my honeymoon with Stavanger was, too.

The one bright spot on the horizon was a planned evening with a friend. In a last ditch attempt to pull myself out of the doldrums, I invited a Norwegian American friend over for dinner. She would undoubtedly be able to remind me of Stavanger’s merits, rather than allow me to dwell on the fact that it was now nothing more than boring old home.

In an effort to impress my friend with my superior culinary skills, I decided to order take out sushi. Nothing says “great hostess” like a plate of raw fish that I didn’t assemble or, god-forbid, catch. I google mapped the restaurant, and set off on my solitary fifteen minute walk in search of the evening’s vittles.

The path I had chosen was unfamiliar to me and I was conscious of the possibility of getting lost, although the idea was strangely exciting. The restaurant was in a new part of town, and I had only a vague idea where I was going when I set off. I contemplated printing off a copy of the map but dismissed it. Grid pattern, schmid pattern. If Europeans could find their way around without having everything set along a perfectly formed matrix, so could I.  I lived here now, I would figure it out.

As I headed through town to my destination, I passed the church and the tourist office, the restaurants and bars I knew, and shops I had been to many times before. But as I got to the edge of my mental map of Stavanger, the usual landmarks started to disappear. The less familiar my surroundings were, the more energized I became.  I passed by buildings under construction, making up stories in my head about what they would eventually be. I passed by restaurants full of end of day coffee drinkers and new mums with prams, shops full of displays of items I might one day need. Is this all it took?  Spin me around twice and send me in a new direction, and “home” instantly becomes a brand new and enticing place?

I found the restaurant exactly where it was supposed to be, picked up my fish and turned for home. As I passed the buildings that had become recognizable landmarks only in the last thirty minutes, I realized there was no way that Stavanger could already be called my home. For one, I still don’t have the slightest clue why there are hundreds of baby's pacifiers tied to a tree in the middle of Mosvatnet Park. Heck, I don't even know how to PRONOUNCE  Mosvatnet Park yet. And I haven't had the chance to ask a really in depth wine question to the lady at the information kiosk in the liquor store.  I have yet to be airlifted off a fjord because it was waaaay too far to walk, or witnessed the great displays of national pride and public intoxication on Constitution Day.  So much to see and do before this place can truly be called "hjem".

Thank God for that. 

Land of Smiles, Stavanger Style

Many moons ago, when I was just a young whippersnapper, I lived in Bangkok, Thailand. I would like to say this was a magical time in my life; but actually it was marred by divorce, infidelity (not mine) and a mild allergic reaction to oyster mushrooms. But that, as Hammy Hamster used to say, is another story.

The upside was that Thailand also had incredible food and stellar spa services, which I availed myself of at every opportunity. Birthday? Time for a massage! Anniversary? Massage and foot scrub.Indigestion from aforementioned oyster mushrooms? Well, you get the point.

Now, having grown accustomed to a wide array of these services in South East Asia, I am forever on the look out for their equivalent in the countries I live in. Hence, upon arriving in Stavanger, one of the most burning questions on my mind was not, "When do I get to eat reindeer?" but "Where am I gonna go for a back rub?" Logical question, it seemed to me, but I wasn't getting any help on the home front. Scottish partner thinks massages are a waste of time and money. Apparently the Scottish people rarely get sick or injured, and never complain about it or see a doctor if they do. They just stoically live to be a hundred and then finally keel over, golf club in hand, with a mighty cry of "Freedom!" Or maybe that's Braveheart with Mel Gibson, I forget.Regardless, as a distance runner and self-confessed gym-a-holic, I was on the hunt for a decent massage, like the ones I used to get for 15 bucks in Thailand, although obviously approximately 8 times more expensive.

Imagine my utter delight when, on one of my "I have nothing to do this afternoon and it's not pouring with rain so better get out there" walks, I stumbled upon the Thai massage STREET. That's right. A whole street dedicated to one of God's greatest gifts to humanity. I practically drooled all over my Norwegian sweater and collapsed in a heap outside one of their doors. Maybe they would take pity on me and drag me into the incense-filled, aromatherapy temple of all things good and right in this world.

Within seconds of me fogging up their front window, a young Thai woman appeared at the front door of one of the places and handed me a brochure. "We have many kind of massage," she said. "You can phone and make appointment." I nodded and smiled, taking the pamphlet from her gingerly. Quite frankly, all the "kind of massage" looked the same to me, but who was I to complain? Sixty quid for an hour of peace, quiet and well-being.Surely even the Scot couldn't argue with that?

A few days and a couple of brutal gym sessions later I found myself back at the same front door where the kindly Thai woman had given me the brochure. Before I know it I am wrapped up in a thin cotton blanket (which I must say, was better suited to the heat of Bangkok than the frosty temperatures of Stavanger) and face down in a massage table. I hear the familiar sounds of the Thai language around me as the other therapists have a chat about what to eat for their evening meal. Thai "spa" music plays in the background, and there is the soft splash of a water feature somewhere which, while slightly annoying, is also putting me right off to sleep.

"Sawat dii kha," says the therapist as she enters the room.

"Sawat dii kha," I respond in kind, happy to get some practice in with my Thai in such an unlikely place. I smile to myself, satisfied.

This is the last word I understand for the next 10 minutes.

Off goes Thai therapist in a blaze of Norwegian. At first, because my Norwegian is baby-level, I am not sure if she is even talking to me. Or if she is speaking Thai with a Norwegian accent, or Norwegian with a Thai accent, or English and I am just too ridiculously into this massage that my brain has stopped identifying language at all. There is a dark but flimsy curtain which separates our treatment space from the others, and there are therapists and customers passing on the other side of our curtain all the time. Maybe she is speaking to one them? I make heavy mouth breathing noises like I am in deep sleep just to cover my tracks. I only hope she can hear it over the ruckus of that damn water feature.

We finally reach an appropriate moment, where I wholeheartedly believe she has just directly asked me a question. I sniffle, yawn loudly and pretend to rouse myself from my Rip Van Winkle-esque slumber.

"May kowjay phasaa nohweh. Phuud phasaa angkit, I don't understand Norwegian. I speak English." I say in my best Thai. Which instantly sounds like a sentence that would be in some ancient Siamese textbook and you would burst into laughter saying, "As IF I will ever use that!"

I can feel Thai therapist, who is now bending me into a bow shape, bristle with excitement.

"Ohhh, you speak English," she says in Thai, "And you speak Thai too! Dii maak, very good!" I breathe a sigh of relief, happy that we have found a common language. Even though my conversational Thai is pretty rusty and rudimentary at best, I am pretty fluent in massage Thai. This hurts, that hurts, I like that, stop that right now.I can handle this. And pathetically, it's more than I yet know in Norwegian.

And so Thai therapist is off again, chattering away to me in a language I thought I would probably never really use again, let alone flat on my stomach on a massage table in a town 2 minutes from the North Sea.
Surprisingly, none of it seems strange. There is a comfort in our interaction. I can predict what she is going to do from moment to moment, what she is going to ask, where she is going to move my arm, head, leg. I have heard this all before, and it's comforting to know that this at least, hasn't changed. I realize that I have been living with unpredictability for what seems like months now, and that this is possibly the first time I have known exactly what would happen next. In this moment, there is no what if I can't, what if it's not, what if we don't. The familiar takes over from the unknown. And after months of uncertainty, face down in that massage table, I finally let myself relax.

We Got the White Stuff, Baby

Winter has arrived in Norway, or shall I say, has been dumped on Norway. And in a town that already has the tendency to look like the perfect storybook version of Santa’s village, Stavanger in snow is almost too much to take. Like cotton candy mixed into a can of Duncan Hines frosting, what started out as pretty darn sweet runs the risk of becoming cloying. On one pre-Christmas evening walk home, I actually felt like lying down in the snow and screaming, “I can’t take it! Enough with the white clapboard houses and twinkly fairy lights and perfect snow-capped mountains!” Honestly the sheer perfection of living in this Ikea Christmas catalog can make your whole world seem strangely artificial.

Now being Canadian, I know my snow from my snow. And I can wholeheartedly say that I feel differently about the snow here than I ever did in Canada. It doesn’t look any different falling from the sky, and it still makes that luscious crunch under my boots after a proper heavy snow. But there is something about only 6 hours of daylight that transforms a place. In this neck of the woods, dusk begins at 3 pm, and if I position my computer in front of our living room windows on a clear day, I have a front row seat as the sun goes down and the light fades. Twilight is a 2 hour affair here. The white streets and houses gradually become one big blanket and single candles are placed in perfectly rectangular windows. White Christmas lights that delicately circle trees and shrubs start to shine. Window curtains are left open and if you wander the winding streets of Gamle Stavanger (“Old Stavanger”) after dark, no one seems to mind you staring in at their immaculately arranged dinner party. And why would they? Life looks pretty good from the inside of Magnus and Ingrid’s gingerbread house. It’s as if they have given up hope that they can be part of the frosty outside world, so we are cordially invited in.

If this is starting to sound like a love letter to my newly adopted country, let me, for the sake of authenticity, paint a more balanced picture. As anyone who has made it through a winter in a snow-afflicted city can attest, there is a serious downside to all this white stuff. Stavanger is no exception. I have decided to keep my “Yak Trax” ice grips on my running shoes this winter, and the relatively stylish boots that were perfectly acceptable for the generally slushy streets of Toronto have been abandoned in favour of their more heavy duty ( and uglier) cousins. In Stavanger, the hilly topography combined with the smooth stone streets would make short work of even your most adept mountain goat. Sitting in a cafe I  watch as shoppers in less dependable footwear  slide, conveyor-belt like, down a vertical 10 meter stretch of cobblestone street, arms outstretched and mouth in a perfectly petrified “O”. I shake my head and stare down at my coffee. Tourists. Never see pictures of THAT in the Ikea catalog.

Of course, I am convinced that this is all one massive ice-induced conspiracy. And it goes deep, my friends, to the seamy underbelly of this crime-ridden town. But Norway has a reputation for being so upright, uncorrupt and law-abiding, you say. Ha! What does the UN know anyway? This place is filled to the brim with chiropractors, physiotherapists, pharmacies and clinics for something called a naprapath. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Apparently they are the chiropractors of soft and connective tissues. Sounds like a nice bit of massage, but is probably painful as hell when you have fallen smack on your back while carrying two tons of Christmas presents and there is an evil Canadian woman in ugly boots snickering at you from a coffee bar window. Still, someone has got to keep these therapists in business. And I am beginning to see the connection. Maybe Magnus and Ingrid have a vested interest in all these practitioners?

Whatever the story, the snow seems to have brought out the best and worst of Stavanger, and Yak Trax on, I am ready to ride it out.   These sneaky Norwegian naprapaths may have the UN fooled, but they haven’t got me yet .You are pretty Stavanger, but you sure are deadly.

 I wonder if Ikea sells crampons?